US President Barack Obama’s military regime (for as commander-in-chief of the world’s largest military machine,
his is not merely a mild “administration”), has proven once again that when it comes to American imperialism’s
dealing with the darker majority of humanity, having a black man in the Oval Office simply doesn’t matter.

Protesters clash with riot police in the northern Egyptian town of Mahalla. Photo: Reuters

US President Barack Obama’s military regime (for as commander-in-chief of the world’s largest military machine,
his is not merely a mild “administration”), has proven once again that when it comes to American imperialism’s
dealing with the darker majority of humanity, having a black man in the Oval Office simply doesn’t matter.

As we argued in the last edition of Zabalaza, the widespread
myth that Obama’s skin-colour automatically made him a better
man was a deeply racist argument that would be proven to be
threadbare as soon as Obama ordered the invasion of his first
“country of colour” – and this happened in under a month of his
inauguration when he authorised sending 17,000 extra troops to
Afghanistan.

But American imperialism is not just about the stick of armed
intervention or enforced regime-change: we must not forget the
carrot of aid, aid that can be temptingly held out, and then withdrawn
if the recipient nation is not suitably compliant.

Egypt, the most populous nation in the Arab world, and, along
with Nigeria and South Africa, one of the most economically and
militarily powerful states in Africa, has been the largest recipient
of US aid after Israel since it signed
a peace accord with Israel in 1979
– sometimes topping US$2
billion/year, US$1.3 billion of that in
military aid and between US$100
million to US$250 million in economic
aid. Ironically, under President
George W Bush, the Americans
gave US$45 million to “good governance”
and “democratisation” programmes,
with a substantial chunk
of that bypassing the state and
going directly to civil society organisations.
But over the past year,
Washington has slashed this civil
society aid to Egypt by more than
half, down to US$20 million.

Not only that, but the strings attached
to US aid have been drawn tighter, with the bourgeois-democratic
Freedom House warning that the new rules gave the
Egyptian government a de facto veto over which civil society organisation
received aid. All civil society organisations have to be
registered in Egypt, so the state now has both an administrative
and financial stranglehold on civil society. The organisations left
high and dry include the Egyptian Centre for Human Rights, the
Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-violence Studies, online
youth-run Radio Horytna (Radio Our Freedom), and groups that
work for the rights of women and the disabled. As the Associated
Press reported on April 18, “Obama has moved away from his
predecessor George W. Bush’s aggressive push to democratise
the regimes of the Middle East.”

And yet Obama has not reduced the steady flow of military aid
to the autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s president-forlife.
In addition, on May 22, The National newspaper reported on
secret negotiations between Obama and Mubarak for an “endowment”
of US$50 million which is being viewed by many in Cairo
as “Mubarak’s trust fund” – this within days of Mubarak’s regime
having extended the state of emergency under which the Egyptian
people have languished for another two years. The state of
emergency was implemented in 1981, so for the past 28 years,
gatherings of the Egyptian popular classes have not been tolerated
by the authorities. It has been years since we have had contact
with the tiny Egyptian anarchist movement, centred on
dissident academics and writers, and their network is presumed
to have been repressed. Under the state of emergency laws,
Egyptian civilians face arrest and trial before military tribunals for
“political” offences, detention without trial and torture is rife, and
participating in even peaceful demonstrations is banned. Although
in practice, in recent years, the authorities have tolerated numerous
strikes by workers, the right to strike itself is restricted and
the right to organise independent
unions severely curtailed.

The length of Egypt’s state of
emergency has already exceeded
the 19-year emergency rule of the
white reactionary regime of South
Korea between 1972 and 1991 when
all anarchist, communist and socialist
activities were explicitly outlawed.
By comparison, South
Africa’s internationally condemned
nationwide state of emergency
lasted only three years, from mid-
1986 to early 1990, and provoked a
popular insurrection that contributed
to the dismantling of the
racial (but not geographic and class)
aspects of apartheid and saw the reemergence
of the anarchist movement.

Amnesty International has no presence in Egypt, and only noted
briefly in its 2010 Report that Mubarak’s Egypt had been proven
to be a torture centre for suspects kidnapped by US agents in “extraordinary
renditions” under its so-called “war on terror” (one of
them an innocent South African Muslim). Egypt remains welcoming
of Sudanese President Omar al-Al Bashir, who is wanted for
genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes by the International
Criminal Court. And yet there are increasing signs of restlessness
and struggle for real democratic change among the
hard-pressed Egyptian popular classes, as the 81-year-old
Mubarak battles illness in his 29th year of rule without an obvious
successor.

We support the oppressed classes of Egypt who have been
short-changed by Obama, in their demand for genuine, sweeping
social reform – reform that no matter how bourgeois, will unintentionally
open up the space for radical, directly democratic experimentation.

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